Memory in a Time of Prose: Studies in Epistemology, Hebrew Scribalism, and the Biblical PastOxford University Press, 2018 M08 15 - 320 pages Memory in a Time of Prose investigates a deceptively straightforward question: what did the biblical scribes know about times previous to their own? Daniel D. Pioske attempts to answer this question by studying the sources, limits, and conditions of knowing that would have shaped biblical stories told about a past that preceded the composition of these writings by a generation or more. This book is comprised of a series of case studies that compare biblical references to an early Iron Age world (ca. 1175-830 BCE) with a wide range of archaeological and historical evidence from the era in which these stories are set. Pioske examines the relationship between the past disclosed through these historical traces and the past represented within the biblical narrative. He discovers that the knowledge available to the biblical scribes about this period derived predominantly from memory and word of mouth, rather than from a corpus of older narrative documents. For those Hebrew scribes who first set down these stories in prose writing, the means for knowing a past and the significance attached to it were, in short, wed foremost to the faculty of remembrance. Memory in a Time of Prose reveals how the past was preserved, transformed, or forgotten in the ancient world of oral, living speech that informed biblical storytelling. |
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alphabetic Ancient Israel Ancient Near East antiquity Arabah Archaeology Atlanta BASOR Beersheba Ben-Yosef Beth-Shemesh biblical narrative biblical scribes biblical writings Book of Samuel Brill Cambridge University Press Canaanite chapter’s David Deuteronomistic History early Iron Age ed-Dawwara Edited Edom Egyptian Eisenbrauns Epic epigraphic epistemological Excavations Finkelstein Ganor Garfinkel Gath Gath’s Gittite Greek Gunkel Hebrew Bible Hebrew prose Hebrew scribes Herodotus highland Historiography idem Inscription Iron Age past Iron Age period Israel Exploration Society Israelite Jerusalem Judah Judahite Khirbet Qeiyafa Kings Lachish Late Bronze Age late Iron Leiden Levy literary Literature locations Maeir Masos material culture Mazar Na’aman NEAEHL Negev ninth century BCE Oral Tradition Oxford University Press Pausanias perspective Philistine Philistine city Philistine Gath prose writing Radiocarbon region Rehov Safi/Gath SBL Press scribal settlement Shephelah source material southern Levant storytelling Tell es-Safi Tell Qasile tenth century texts textual Thucydides Ugarit vernacular Winona Lake written Ziklag